How to deal with poison immunes?

[schnelltot]

I'm starting a Poisonmancer. But I'm wondering, what's the best way to deal with poison immunes in the absence of godly gear? I'm going to try to collect the Trang Oul set, and am eyeing Blackbog's Sharp Cinquedas, but poison immune monsters will still be a pain. Also, whenever I make a build, I always plan to for Hell-viability by level 80--'cause it just takes friggin' forever to level after 80, it seems. The way I see it, these are the options.

1--Spend rest of points in summoning tree after all poisons are synergized. However, skeletons will be weak without full investment in SS and SM and I'll need to be in the 90s before they can deal fairly effectively, it looks like.

2--Max CE. But a complaint: I used it a little bit in the last Necromancer I had (the skill was probably at level 5 or 6) and I was underwhelmed by it. In Hell difficulty I would wait for monsters to be practically right on top of a corpse, and they would just walk right through the blast with a sliver of life taken away. I know it does half fire/half physical damage, perhaps amp damage would help out?

3--Put points in Revive, instead of skeletons. However, I also had a few points invested in Revive, and I didn't like them at all. I would approach a crowd of monsters, and the revived enemies would completely wander around forever and then suddenly they're like "Wait, what was I doing? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to attack monsters *whack* *whack* Ah well, I'll go wander off to nowhere for a little while longer." Total crap AI on the Revives.

4--Minus poison resistance. The immediate way is by LR; however, I know it takes a 1/5th penalty on immunes, so even at lvl 20 (-67% to all resistances), poison immunes will be minus only about 13% damage. So a monster with 100 resistance will now have a hearty 87, and a monster with 120 resistance can't be broken! But then the Trang Oul set gives -25% as well. So, if I break an immunity, will that monster with a LR-made 87% resistance now have 62%? Better, but still hefty. Then of course there is Death's Web with the -45 or something to poison resistance; but I SERIOUSLY doubt I'll get my hand on one for a long time to come. I think Blackbog's should be cheaper (and I'm more interested in a dagger anyway) so I'm planning to use that.

5--Cast amp damage on a poison immune and go melee him with the dagger. A bit more dangerous, and with daggers being generally low-damage, particularly Blackbog's, I don't see it realistically taking down a Hell-difficulty poison immune in a good enough time before my *** is fried.

So basically, without utterly godly gear, I don't see a reasonable way to deal with poison immunes by lvl 80. What say you?

[lumpor]

Of course you will be able to deal with poison immunes. Lower resist will break most immunities, and facets + 3-piece trang oul will take the poison damage down to a reasonable level. Trangs is cheap as hell. Untwinked, I got the gloves and shield at like level 35 (through trading pgems and some stuff ofc). The poison nova will do high damage anyway, so even if the enemy has high resistance, as long as it isn't immune, you'll be fine. For unreakables, ce is good. You just didn't have enough +skills to make it a higher level. If you do pit runs in hell, you should become quite rich and able to afford a deaths web. Blackbogs is still good against tough enemies, but as soon as you have 3-piece trangs, bramble, and deaths web and maxed all poison skills, most enemies should die from 1 nova. But I agree with you that poison dagger is underestimated and used waaay too little. It does great damage, but the drawback is that it's just so unflexible. It requires you to go into melee range, and can only poison 1 enemy at a time. Against single eneies though, I think it's far superior to nova (except if nova kills the enemy in 1 hit anyway).

[schnelltot]

But CE damage doesn't improve with more points, right? Only the radius. Like I said, I waited for a pack to walk right over a corpse and they ignored the boom like they owned the joint.

[candystar]

I started off as a summoner and I'm thinking of branching off into a poison hybrid so far I have maxed skeleton mastery and raise skeletons and one point in monster resist and attract with all the pre-requisites. Getting here was a breeze and if you plan to use skeletons I advise u to go that path first since it is much easier. Right now I'm debating to dedicate going all out CE or going the poison root and I was afraid of a similar thing, the poison attacks being utterly pathetic in hell I haven't experimented much though.

[Ed from Russia]

I had the exact same equipment setup last ladder season (trang set, blackbog's Sharp), and did fine handling with Poison Immunes:
- I had 15 hard points in Dim Vision, so could blind monsters for a while while my merc killed them.
- Lower Resist will break immunities, and CE will speed things up a lot.
- Summons will work but will be slow in Hell because: (1) it's Hell and (2) you won't have these skills maxed.

[candystar]

I had the exact same equipment setup last ladder season (trang set, blackbog's Sharp), and did fine handling with Poison Immunes:
- I had 15 hard points in Dim Vision, so could blind monsters for a while while my merc killed them.
- Lower Resist will break immunities, and CE will speed things up a lot.
- Summons will work but will be slow in Hell because: (1) it's Hell and (2) you won't have these skills maxed.

I have skeleton mastery + raise skeleton maxed. I'm playing to get 1point for each curse. So I'll only have one in CE. Do you think this build is viable from your experience?

[MYK]

Cool deal with Trang-Oul's set - the oskill Firewall is actually powerful enough to kill PI monsters with LR cast on them.

A decent mercenary will also kill things fast in tendem with the "amplify damage" curse and the "corpse explosion" spell.

I like the poison/summon hybrid. 20 in raise skeleton, rest in poison skills, curses, one point wonders. It rocks just fine with the Trang-Oul's set and the wand/spirit sword/dagger of your choice.
The skeletons aren't really for killing, they keep stuff off of you while monsters die to poison damage. If they're poison immune, the skeletons hold those off until your Firewall/Merc gets the kill.

[lumpor]

Corpse explosion deals half physical damage, and half fire damage. The physical damage will deal damage equal to 30-50% of the corpses life, and the same amount for fire. Meaning if you amp the monsters, the physical will deal 60-100% of the monsters life, while the fire will deal 30-50% of the monsters life. So yeah, most of the monsters will die. As myk said, the fire spells from trangs are a good way too, if ce doesn't work

[axdaddy]

Use a bit of all the options.

1. Max raise skeletons with 1 point in skeleton mastery. Without max skeleton mastery, they might or might not survive well depending on you gear, but every little meat shield or damage helps. It'll help with your leveling anyway. Complement the skeletons with a nasty might merc with an ethereal polearm. Obedience, bonehew, reapers are all cheap (if you can afford trangs it wont be a problem) and adds nasty physical damage.

2. Put 1 point in CE if you are going the skeleton route. Make use of +skills to bring it up to a healthy level. Level 10 would be a good start. Amp or lower resist the monster before blasting it, although amp works better. Its one of the best spells ever. It doesn't work as well in an 8-player game or vs physical/fire immunes obviously.

3. 1 point in Revive helps. Revives tank alot better than skeletons, although the AI might suck depending on the kind of revive u summon. Tip, revive the monsters that fall into these catergories: fast, fat, aggressive, high damage.

4. Get a death web if you can afford. Look around for a lowest one at a cheap price. Even the worse death web is much better than blackbogs. But even without death web, trangs provide a nice -25 psn resist.

5. You dont have AR to melee, if you using full trangs, use firewall. The damage is actually very nice. Play around with your curses, and let your merc and skeletons attack. Others have suggested dim vision, confuse and attract. Those work, or you could cast terror to scatter big packs. Decrepify is very useful curse too.

Other tips. Ditch the blackbogs. The only thing this does is add +4 to psn nova. Find yourself ANY decent wand and make a white in it. u get +3 pnb skills, which helps your CE too, u get faster cast, life/mana, bone armour, skeleton mastery, and whatever skills that the base wand came with.

[abbithedog]

I've been out of it for a few years, but used to be trang's full set was bugged and the FCR bonuses were not applied - is that still a problem?

[Mad Mantis]

Yes, Trang's is still bugged.

[Kerr]

Meh im kinda in the same position, those Poison immunes in the Chaos sanc and in the 2nd to last round of the throne room are killer. . .

My PN is at like lvl 27, doing ~4200dmg every 2 seconds, it just doesnt seem like enough in the later acts in hell, i have all of trangs besides the belt.

I want bramble so bad but its just too damn expensive, i really dont see it being feasible at this point in the season, enless your amazing at MF runs, which i am not.

I barley use my merc . . he dies to damn fast